About

Voodoo Doughnut Recordings was founded in 2013 as an offshoot of Portland, Oregon-based Voodoo Doughnut. In our first year, we released 13 (a baker’s dozen) big-hole vinyl singles that all touched on or alluded to fried dough.

Many of the artists in our 7″ series are from Portland (Poison Idea, Deep Fried Boogie Band, The Pynnacles, to name a few) but others came from as far afield as Philadelphia (Low Cut Connie) and Switzerland (Mister Milano).

The label’s second year saw the unveiling of the “Tales from the Grease Trap” live archival series, featuring never-before-released, newly mixed and mastered club recordings from legendary 1990s bands such as Dead Moon, Crackerbash and The Dandy Warhols.

Still, you may be wondering, why a record label in the first place? The original Voodoo Doughnut in downtown Portland, when it opened in 2003, was smooshed between Berbati’s Pan and the Paris Theater and across the street from Dante’s Inferno. The hole-in-the-wall doughnuteria, which started off being open from 10pm to 10am, catered to Portland’s night owl and rock ‘n’ roll communities.

Voodoo’s passion for music–and circular objects with holes in the middle–has been there from the beginning. Prior to becoming jet-setting doughnut Barons bent on world domination, Voodoo Doughnut co-founders Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson and Tres Shannon powered themselves through graveyard frying shifts by blasting Fats Domino, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Roger Miller and Hank Snow. Cat Daddy hails from Memphis, land of Sun and Stax. Tres, a fixture in Portland’s music scene since the 1980s, was co-founder of the all-ages X-Ray Cafe, which operated from 1990 to 1994 on the very same block as Voodoo Doughnut’s flagship store (Not coincidentally, the X-Ray Cafe is the source of many of our archival recordings.).

Voodoo Doughnut Recordings now champions music both old and new, both doughnut-related and not. Through our commitment to quality and eclecticism, we are proud to, without qualification, call ourselves “The World’s Leading Doughnut-Based Recording Company.”